Almost a decade ago, screenwriters David S. Goyer (Nolan’s Batman trilogy) and Justin Marks (The Jungle Book) collaborated on a script for a Green Arrow live-action film entitled “Green Arrow: Escape From Super Max.” It featured Oliver Queen being sent to prison for a crime he didn’t commit. The prison he is sent to is a high-tech facility that is capable of housing super-powered villains. To clear his name, Oliver will need to escape from the inescapable fortress. To do that, he’ll need help from villains he once put away.
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The villains featured throughout the script were mainly B and C level, but there were cameos written for top tier villains like Lex Luthor, The Riddler and even The Joker. In a recent interview, it was pointed out to Goyer that his Green Arrow film was ahead of its time when you compare the villain-heavy film to David Ayer’s Suicide Squad movie.
“I think it absolutely was”, Goyer told Den of Geek. “I think if that script had come over the transom a couple of years later… It was completely ahead of its time. By the way, everything I see about Suicide Squad looks fantastic and it’s a different story. But it was absolutely ahead of its time. You know, Marvel was considering doing the Sinister Six and at the time, God, I think this was eight or nine years ago that we wrote a couple of drafts, but it certainly was like this oddball project at Warner Bros at the time, they were like – even though the script was good – ‘why would we make a movie about a bunch of villains? That makes no sense.’”
“The executive on it was really visionary, but the higher-ups, none of whom are at Warner Bros any more, just thought at the time, you know, we just want to make Batman and Superman movies,” he explained. “We don’t want to make any other characters. But this is before Marvel had really taken off, before more obscure projects like Guardians Of The Galaxy or Ant-Man or things like that had huge success, before the current gold rush I guess, if you will. It’s natural that eventually someone was going to make a villain movie, so that’s just what happened!”
Additionally, Goyer told the site he won’t be directing any of the upcoming DC Comics movies.
